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In this article, we delve into the significance of modernizing your data infrastructure to enhance application development and iteration. We will highlight the key features and advantages of utilizing MongoDB Atlas on AWS, along with a case study showcasing one organization’s modernization journey.
In today’s competitive landscape, the ability to deliver modern customer experiences can be a decisive advantage for businesses. However, for many, an outdated data infrastructure can hinder innovation. To rapidly build and evolve applications, access critical insights promptly, and maintain a competitive edge, organizations must modernize their data frameworks.
Most modernization initiatives begin by shedding some of the burdens of the past. Traditionally, many business applications have relied on legacy systems, particularly relational database management systems (RDBMS), which impose a rigid, table-based data structure. This inflexibility complicates application development and slows down the process.
Tabular data models can often be counterintuitive and do not align with how most developers conceptualize and code at the application level. For instance, a single logical entity, like a customer, can be dispersed across numerous tables. Additionally, many relational databases lack built-in distributed architecture, raising the risk of downtime due to the absence of automatic failover. Without horizontal scaling capabilities, expanding the data layer becomes both costly and complex, especially for a global customer base. The ramifications of an unwieldy data infrastructure are extensive.
Developer productivity is hampered as they grapple with a data model that does not align with application logic and is challenging to adapt. Managing databases becomes cumbersome, particularly when one has to implement resilience and scaling manually—an even more arduous task for those maintaining on-premises infrastructure.
Some organizations may try to introduce new data systems alongside their RDBMS to gain additional capabilities, only to face new hurdles related to data integration, duplication, and convoluted architectures. The overall effect is a fragmented development experience that stifles innovation.
The solution lies in adopting a global cloud database service that facilitates the creation, operation, and enhancement of modern applications.
Why Choose MongoDB Atlas on AWS for Modernization?
The synergy between MongoDB Atlas and AWS simplifies the process of consistently delivering exceptional features and products globally, all while boosting developer productivity. MongoDB’s flexible document model streamlines the application-building process, eliminating the rigidity and friction associated with relational databases.
Intelligent performance suggestions allow users to identify index recommendations based on slow-running queries, which they can implement with just a few clicks. Atlas and AWS together empower developers to create modern, data-driven applications, while also enhancing performance and simplifying the data layer.
MongoDB Atlas’s unified data architecture reduces complexity across systems, allowing interactions through a single API to address all core application data needs—from transactional applications to built-in search, real-time analytics, and data lake workloads.
Furthermore, integration with AWS services enhances capabilities, facilitating easy connections with the AWS application tier. Developers can create event-driven applications using Amazon EventBridge or connect with Amazon Kinesis for streaming data and real-time enrichment.
With MongoDB Atlas and AWS, deployment can occur confidently across 18 AWS Regions worldwide. Designed with distributed fault tolerance for resilience, Atlas boasts an industry-leading uptime SLA of 99.995%. Coupled with built-in backups and compliance measures, organizations can trust Atlas on AWS with their most sensitive data and critical workloads.
Softinstigate: Thriving in a Fast-Paced Italian Market
Softinstigate, a specialized services firm, excels in delivering innovative engineering solutions for clients aiming to accelerate software development and digital transformation. The founders, CEO Marco Rossi and Co-Founder Lisa Bertini, recognized the importance of an agile database in achieving success. Once they realized they were investing excessive time in technical fixes instead of addressing client needs, they recognized a need for change.
To speed up development cycles and secure contracts in Italy’s rapidly evolving market, Marco and Lisa decided to move away from the constraints of relational databases. They understood that with the surge in web and mobile applications, managing data through a document database would be much more efficient. Consequently, they opted to build a Java app server on MongoDB.
RESTHeart: A Simplified REST API for MongoDB
Softinstigate developed RESTHeart, a ready-to-use REST API for MongoDB, and now deploys most of its products and services on MongoDB Atlas via AWS. RESTHeart serves as a stateless API microservice utilizing simple HTTP calls to harness the power of MongoDB, eliminating the need for server-side coding and enabling developers to focus on innovation.
Many of Softinstigate’s clients now run RESTHeart on Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), which simplifies management compared to Kubernetes. The architecture includes a Multi-Availability Zone Application Load Balancer atop the ECS cluster for automatic load balancing and seamless blue/green deployments.
With MongoDB Atlas’s always-on global clusters, RESTHeart’s architecture mitigates any single point of failure. Softinstigate’s RESTful approach treats sessions and transactions as primary REST resources, leveraging MongoDB’s atomic operations on single documents. This methodology is one reason they opted for embedded documents rather than creating relationships between multiple documents and collections.
With the launch of MongoDB 4.0, Softinstigate also benefited from enhanced atomicity and strong consistency across databases, documents, collections, and shards through transactions.
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